Chart of the Day: Supreme Court Chatter

Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters.

Via the New York Times, which reports the shocking news that among Supreme Court nominees, “female and minority nominees are questioned more closely than white male ones,” here’s a chart showing the number of comments made by senators and nominees during confirmation hearings between 1939 and 2009. (Full study here.) Aside from the fact that certain nominees were obviously more controversial than others, the most noticeable thing is that starting in the early 70s the sheer volume of babble has increased dramatically. Just eyeballing the chart, it looks like the average number of comments from senators has gone up from around 200 to 1000. But does this also mean that the quality of Supreme Court confirmation hearings has gone up 5x? The question sort of answers itself, doesn’t it?

FACT:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and the wealthy wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2019 demands.